


overpowering citrus scent

by t34lbloods (perculious)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/pseuds/t34lbloods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and Terezi chat about options.</p>
            </blockquote>





	overpowering citrus scent

**Author's Note:**

> written for HSWC bonus round 1 for the following prompt:  
> “There's always another secret.”   
> ― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“It must be killing you,” Rose says. Terezi can feel the shift in the air next to her as Rose sits down, and a miasma of overpowering citrus scent wafts into her field of vision. The human’s mouth is quirked upwards. Terezi’s figured out by now that it doesn’t mean Rose is smiling, but that she’s holding back.

“Despite what I know to be excessive overeducation from one Mr. Vantas, you still show little progress in your grasp of the quadrant system,” Terezi says. “My kismesis does not kill me! That would be against the very concept of kismesissitude.”

“You’re wrong,” Rose says. The violet of her eyes is a hint of tang in the swimming sweetness of her orange clothes and the yellow-white of her hair. “I have been having private lessons in quadrants from Kanaya, who is a significantly more coherent and comprehensible instructor, although she occasionally lacks Mr. Vantas’ fire. I would say I am progressing multiculturally at a higher than average rate, in comparison with the rest of the sample group.”

Terezi shrugs a shoulder, and picks at her toenail with a claw. “I am fairly positive that ‘private lessons in quadrants’ is a euphemism for being taken to the drones’ culling pavilion,” she says. It’s not, but Rose doesn’t even react. Dave would; he’d say, “Oh my god, TZ, isn’t there anything on your fucked up Battle Royale planet that doesn’t revolve around pulling out each other’s tendons with pitchforks?” and segue into a ten-minute monologue that she would understand about a fifth of.

“I thought of something very silly,” Rose says. “A solicitation that I am now reconsidering, in the cold, sobering light of day, a phrase I use in an excruciatingly literal sense. My ambitions may have run ahead of me, like so many disobedient canines.”

“A solicitation.” Terezi furrows her eyebrows slightly. There is a huge chunk of grit stuck behind her big toenail, and it refuses to come loose. She works away at it. “I was under the impression that the limitations of human quadrants meant that any romantic gestures towards me would be highly inappropriate, given my current attachments.”

“In the flushed quadrant.” Rose’s tone is measured, but there’s a hint of a tremor underneath it, and Terezi can smell the sour prickle of sweat staining the back of her neck. She’s a little nervous. “What I had in mind was an arrangement that would cool the loathing between you and your spade partner, allowing the emotional well-being of your and Gamzee’s other quadrantmates to remain undisturbed.”

Terezi let a grin split her face, turning in Rose’s direction. “You want us ash?”

“I don’t know.” An extra shot of creamy white suffuses the smellscape as Rose reaches an arm up to adjust her headband. “As a human, I’m not sure what the expected emotional basis is for initiating an ashen relationship. Am I meant to feel a type of longing, analogous to any other romantic passion? Is it possible to be ashstruck?”

“Well, how do you feel?” The chunk of grit finally pops free. Terezi impales it on her claw, and pops it into her mouth for a snack. It crunches when she bites down.

Rose takes a moment to answer. “Mostly frustration. I am concerned about the stability of our social structures, and I would like to assert some manner of control over the situation. Especially as it affects the emotional health of people I care about.”

Terezi leans back on her elbows, and tilts her face up to the ceiling. It’s nothing but gray, gray, gray, and she can barely smell it through the warm wash of Rose’s scents. She has been closely observing the human familial structure, and it still makes little sense. Most of the time Rose and Dave don’t show each other any kind of particular consideration. When they speak, their conversations so quickly go off the rails of human sarcasm that they’re barely comprehensible. She wants to say that Rose is not the only one who cares about his emotional health, but it would quickly lead to questions. Terezi does not want to talk about what Dave would think or why she is doing a thing that might hurt him if the thought of hurting him makes her pusher feel like the blood has all been squeezed out of it, leaving it a crumpled up ball of muscle in center of her organ cavity.

“But you said you’ve changed your mind?” she says finally, and Rose nods minutely.

“It was a passing whim. I now think that inserting myself into the situation would only serve to complicate it. Which is the last thing anyone needs.”

Terezi licks up the last bit of grit stuck to her top right fang. “So why are you here?”

“To offer to be a friend.” Rose tilts her head, looking at Terezi. “If you want.”

Terezi grimaces. “I have friends,” she says.

“But not ones you’re being honest with.”

Nope, not ones she’s being honest with, and that’s not a category that includes Rose either. There are nightmare visions of blueberry blood around the edges of her consciousness, and the sense memory of bile at the back of her throat as a body thuds limp onto the ground. There’s the biological buzz under her skin urging her to fill her quadrants, to pound out her anxieties in the safe, clean realm of hatemance so they don’t boil over. There’s the little selfish voice in the back of her thinkpan that is tired of weighing options and probability branches and just wants to do what she wants for a little while, even though it makes her feel like a shriveled-up vine fruit smashed into the floor of someone’s nutrition block. Rose knows that she has a kismesis, but it doesn’t mean she knows Terezi any better than Dave does.

“Thanks,” she finds herself saying, her voice small.

“You’re welcome,” Rose says. They sit in silence.


End file.
